NATO

NATO's own machinery could not produce a Hormuz response, so Britain and France built one outside it. The Northwood summit drafted rules of engagement without US input, and by early May the UK was leading a rival 40-nation Coalition against the blockade after zero states committed warships to Washington's own call.

By 12 May the planning had become a standing mission: the UK named Typhoons and HMS Dragon, Italy sent minesweepers, and four more states added kit, even as the Coalition ran eight days deployed with no published rules of engagement. Germany and Turkey's refusal to join Left NATO's unanimity requirement exposed as the reason coalitions of the willing, not Brussels, now do this work.

On 20 April British and French planners meeting at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood drafted rules of engagement for a 51-nation Hormuz maritime mission, the second such planning session in three days that Washington did not attend . The gap they were closing was operational: the IRGC had granted radio clearance to two Indian tankers on 18 April, then opened fire anyway, so a strictly defensive escort mandate could not hold.

Macron and Starmer reclassified the mission from planning to established that same day, headquartered at Northwood rather than routed through NATO's own Brussels chain, because the alliance's unanimity rule lets any single member block collective action . Mine clearance is written into the mandate; the United States, absent from the drafting, inherits whatever the Coalition decides.

On 16 March the US president said leaving NATO was "something to think about" after Australia, Japan, Britain, Germany and France all declined to send warships escorting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with Germany's foreign minister replying that Berlin would not join the conflict . Three separate use attempts, aimed at Europe, China and the alliance itself, had by then produced zero warship commitments.

Three days later the same president dismissed NATO's own allies as a "paper tiger" . Neither outburst produced a single frigate; the strait stayed closed, and the episode Left open whether Article 5's mutual defence guarantee holds when the loudest doubts about it come from within.